Red Shoes

All I ever wanted was to be beautiful. Like new mothers, like flickering candles in dark rooms like flowers pressed into books like new shoes... like new red shoes. Like the ones Dorothy wore trying to find home that was already in her. All bright and unscuffed. All I ever wanted was to be red shoes. Trying to find the home that has been in me all along, realizing that I've just been getting lost along the way. Between faded history, and good intentions, but bad decisions. but I'm trying. Yellow brick road ain't golden blocks, just piss, nothing I was expecting. I think, I think I met the wizard, he was a lot more smoke than mirrors. See, see smoke can mask the worst of ourselves and when you stare at mirrors long enough you see more of who you are. And I am all ugly, and I ruin love by wanting it so bad and that creates all types of empty. Empty like tin man. Or I'm tin man, hole in my chest where a heart is supposed confide in. but I'm still living. Or call me scarecrow, confused and lost in too big of a world. Or maybe I'm lion, scared and nowhere to belong, all loathed and declawed. I know I met the wizard he was all bite and no bark, a silent storm. Full of clouds and smoke, no mirror in sight. People pretend to know him, and I'm guilty too. Trying to find and save something that wasn’t there in the first place, he doesn't need saving, but maybe I do. This piss yellow road led me to him, nothing I was expecting, just to show me what was already in me in the first place. He's saving me, a silent storm of a friend that tells me "You're lovely."